Stop Looking At Me Like That
by Nikapi
Summary: In every generation there is born one girl who will fight badness. Except when there're two. (Bad summary. I couldnt think of anything else. Not exactly what it sounds like.)


Title: Stop Looking At Me Like That  
Disclaimer: Buffy, Xander, Giles, Willow, and the rest of the 'somewhat-scoobies' are Joss & Co's, not mine. Marielle, Jo, Tessi, Liz, and whoever else - those are figments of my imagination, and that's how I like them.  
  
When I'm having some inspiration issues, I add to this. Finally, I got to the point where it was dragging, so I finished it up. A filler fic, if anything, but I figure, why not? As always, reviews are my anti-drug, so please, send'm in!  
  
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In every generation there is born one girl who will fight badness. And that girl gets a Watcher, who, save one exception I can think of, is a waste of space and does nothing useful while this girl is off kicking some ass. After a while - or sometimes, not so much a while - the girl dies, and the next one is put at bat.  
  
No, that's not how the story is usually phrased. Stop looking at me like that.  
  
So one day, a girl's summoned who does the usual evil fighting stuff, but there's a twist; This girl has friends. Kooky, huh? A teenage girl with friends. But evidently, no other slayers in the history of the universe have actually had lives. You're looking at me funny again. What? Oh. Slayer. The slayer - that one girl who fights evil. Catchy name, huh? So, anyway, one of these girls continues her social life while she fights evil, and makes friends. That's where I come in. My name's Alexander Harris. Don't ever call me that. Just Xander is fine.  
  
So, this girl, we'll call her Buffy - because coincidentally, that's her name - fights vampires and demons. They're real. What, you thought I was talking about robbers and bad, nasty bikers? E-V-I-L. Stop staring, I'm serious. Or as serious as I get. Anyway, Buffy makes some friends, including (But sadly - not limited to) myself and a girl who could tell you what kind of pajamas I wore at age 4 named Willow Rosenburg. She - Buffy - had one of those Watcher types, but not a typical one. He was that big exception I mentioned earlier, Rupert Giles - just Giles, to us. He could pound you into the dirt and then sit you down to tea and it wouldn't be strange. Well, not from his perspective. He was a good guy. The four of us, we were pretty inseparable for a while - even dubbed the Scooby Gang, though I cant remember by who.. It sounds like something I would say. So, back on topic, there were also few unmentionable outsiders - Ever heard of a vampire with a soul? No? You're lucky. If anyone ever mentions one, go the other way, quickly - who came and went and helped us for a time, and then went about their business. Of course, I don't mean to say that the somewhat-scoobies didn't contribute. They did. A lot. But a few were really not people people. There was this one girl, Cordelia..what? Oh. Anyway.  
  
Buffy was really an amazing person. She was just..I'm not sure how to put it. She was a light. It sounds cheesy, but she really was, she was light in all of our lives. I mean, she was light that nearly got us killed on several occasions, and we nearly got her killed an equal amount of times, actually, but there is just no arguing that there never has been, and never will be, another person quite like her. She was smart, and brave, and loving, and loyal, and dedicated to what she did, even when it was destroying her life, and she hated her calling, but she always did what she needed to. She got the job done.  
  
She died once, in highschool. The Master - he was this old baddass vampire - he drowned her in a puddle, but I - well, I, and that souled vampire you should avoid like the plague - brought her back.  
  
You heard the story, though. What do you mean no? I just told you! Well, I'll tell it again. One slayer dies, the next is called. Nasty cycle. There, that's the story. So Kendra - the new slayer. Keep up, will ya? - showed up, and we had two slayers. And Drusilla - another old baddass, only crazier, and an old pal of Soulboy, at that - killed her. So Faith made the scene. And she was completely psychotic and lets never talk about her again. She stuck around for a few years, nearly killed us, spent some time in a coma, hightailed it out of town, and died in, of all things, a jail fight.  
  
Let me tell you, that sucked.  
  
That sucked so, so very much. Faith was..an experience. But the slayer we got after that was so, so very much worse.  
  
Marielle. Born to a watcher. Raised by the council. Hell. On. Two. Legs.  
  
This girl was unbelievable. Everything was regulation to her. Remember Kendra? She was strict. She has rules, and how things had to be done, and whole sections of the library memorized, and was a teen gone wild compared to Marielle.  
  
If there's anything I've picked up about being an effective slayer, it's this: if you cant learn a little flexibility, and be willing to bend, you'll break. That's important. Remember that. Marielle was dead in two months. Anyway, the council was a more than a little upset after that, without their golden child - supremest of all slayers, goddess of the stake - to make our lives miserable by proxy. I almost felt - feel - bad for them. Sort of. When she died, they were faced with some serious questions, according to Giles. Here was this girl they had raised from birth to be a slayer, a girl who should have been unbeatable, and she barely lasted long enough to introduce herself. I do feel bad for her, Marielle. If she wasn't such a tight ass, she might have been nice. Anyway, after that, Tessi was called. She lasted a little bit longer, probably because the council didn't get their forks into her before she was called. She wasn't really cut out for it, though. She was barely 14 - how much does that suck? - and if she had been called two years later, she might have really been something, but she wasn't. A fledgling got her, just out of the grave. Sank his teeth into her while her back was turned. She lived six months.  
  
After that, the council - and boy were they pissed - stopped sending their slayers to the hellmouth, or letting them come into contact with any of us. I'm surprised they didn't do that sooner, actually, since we were such horrible influences on Buffy and all. Yeah, sarcasm. I do that. So, I guess their plan was if we naughty few didn't get to impact the girl of the week, she'd make it and follow orders like a good minion.  
  
It so didn't work. It took some doing, and a lot of connections, but we did manage to keep up with what was going on with the slayer du jour. In the course of a year and a half, five girls were called. Each time one of them died - and, I've heard, none of them were particularly nice deaths - the council lost a little bit of it's sway over the next in line. By the time Jo was called, they were having some serious issues. Their methods didn't work, their tests were outdated, and their watchers were crap.  
  
Jo was something else. More like Buffy than any other slayer I've met, yet. For one thing, she really didn't give a damn what the council told her to do, and the first thing she did was ditch her watcher and pack up for the 'dale. Found Buffy pretty fast, asked for her help in learning how to stay alive. She had known about vampires before she was called - cant tell you why, 'cos I don't know, she was always pretty tight lipped about it - and she had this..fire. Nice girl, smart, pretty funny, but when it came down to it, all she wanted to do was some serious slaying. Buffy, Willow, and I..we all had our theories, when it came to what her story was - family dead, saw someone killed, just liked dust - but she died before she could tell us. Almost two years, and her death had a pretty big impact on us all, even though she was so much younger than us. The council killed her. Don't look so surprised, the council..realy not nice guys. They were trying to regain some power, I guess, and as they had tried, and failed, to deal with Buffy more than once, they went after Jo. She never saw it coming.  
  
After that, the four of us made a decision. By then, it was just us four again, by the way - all the girlfriends, the crushes, the work buddies, they got a little tired of fighting, every day, every night, for years at a time. It happened slowly, but they all left, eventually. We were 25 - well, Giles was closer to 50 - and right back where we were when we were 16. Yes, very sad. So we made a decision. The council was getting out of control, and so was the supernatural activity level. We couldn't trust the council with protecting and guiding slayers anymore - they were more harmful than helpful. No one else really knew about slayers and slaying like we did, so, we decided enough was enough. We were taking over.  
  
What? We put a lot of thought into it. We were all adult and almost all mature. We decided we could handle it better than a bunch of guys who probably still used garlic as a grade-a weapon. Yeah, that sounded less snobby in my head. The only problem was, we had no idea how to find out who the next slayer was before the council got at her. Jo's replacement was already tearing through Miami, completely ignoring her watcher.  
  
Willow was the one who solved the problem. I don't know how she did it, but she went through some mystical mojo - and threatened to curse the guy named Willy - and we managed to get in touch with an Avatar for the Powers That Be. He was a pain in the ass to deal with, but he managed to cut us a deal. Way back at the founding of the Watcher's Council, the head honchos made a deal with the powers. They would be notified by one of the power's people when a new slayer was called, and would be told who she was, and where to find her. Then it was up to them. We managed to get the same deal - the Watcher's Council would still be notified, that was an unbreakable pact - but now we would be, too. In exchange - there's always an exchange. Remember that, too - the four of us each owe the powers one task each. Basically, sometime in the future, they will give us something they want us to do, and we have to do it, no matter what. Giles' done his, actually, only a few weeks after we made the deal.  
  
Jo's replacement, Alissa, died last week. A Trenisa demon took her down. Only four months after she was called. Our link, a guy named Whistler - who, actually, Buffy already knew - turned up the next day, and sent us, specifically me, off to find the next slayer.  
  
Elizabeth Elise Harper. Age, 17. Address, 258 West 72nd. New York, New York. On the school track team. Straight B student. Likely to kill her watcher before he kills her.  
  
Don't look so surprised, Liz - Can I call you Liz? - why else would I have told you all that?  
  
No, seriously. Look - hey, come back here. Look. Buffy and Willow are on their way down in two days. Just hear them out.  
  
You're looking at me funny again.  
  
Stop that. 


End file.
